Night Owl Cards

  I can't say there was ever a time when I liked every card that came out of a pack or into my collection.   Even in my youngest days of opening packs, between 1974-76, there were cards I didn't like. That was based entirely on the goofy whims of little kids -- what the player looked like, whether they wore a hat, whether they had a "weird" (to us) name.   As I grew older, my dislikes were based on other ideas: what team they played for, whether their team had wronged my team and sometimes the behavior of the player on the field, which was mostly confined to Reggie Jackson and Pete Rose.   Now my card dislikes can come from a host of reasons: certain teams and behaviors, sure, but also what card brand it is, what ridiculous parallel it is, and -- here's something we never considered as kids -- what those players say and how they act off the field. It's safe to say that we know too much and it's affecting the way I feel about the cards that arrive at my hom...

    OK, now that I've established myself as an oddball in the current collecting landscape -- preferring vintage cards and all -- it's appropriate that I show off some recent "oddball" arrivals in my collection.   This runs the gamut and covers 85 years of trading cards and some of it isn't even cardboard.   Let's see:   Fired-up by my first acquisition of a 1960 Leaf high-number Dodger card in Rip Repulski, I decided to grab another one with this Joe Pignatano. It has a few minor flaws (it was listed as "good," which is usually "good enough" for me), but it still looks great.   That leaves just Stan Williams to complete the team set. Upon landing the Repulski, I received an email informing me that the Williams was available for a reasonable price on sportlots. But I didn't jump on it (I'm rarely financially ready to pounce on opportunities) and it's not there anymore.     Here's a card -- and an owlie greeting card -- that ...

   There's a certain amount of isolation built into being a blogger, or a writer in general. I don't know if that's exactly the right word but I definitely have the feeling of being on my own island from time to time, and probably more often lately.   There's no easy way to gauge who is reading your copy or how often. Blogger (and I'm assuming Wordpress) is imperfect like that. All you have are comments -- and Blogger has now made that more difficult by requiring you to use the Google Chrome browser to comment on its blogs (but I make sure to go that extra step to comment on other blogs). And also you have reader numbers, and wow is that inaccurate, especially lately.   Have any other bloggers experienced this?:      These are the viewer numbers for my posts on NOC for the last week or so. Numbers are on the far right. They are wildly beyond what is typical. The same holds true for my 1993 Upper Deck blog, where posts the last couple of cards is in tri...

  Yesterday my vehicle received four brand-new tires. It was long overdue. I hadn't changed them since I bought it four years ago, and it had been hovering over my head for awhile now.   You know how it goes. Tires are expensive -- everything is. And people who aren't made of cash are always pushing it. But I don't like the chaos in my brain of the multitude of unfinished tasks, and when something is accomplished -- even something as mundane as new tires -- I feel that endorphin rush, that rush of "Done!" Finally, something I can cross of The Massive List.   This is something that translates easily to the hobby, especially if you are some sort of completist, as I am. I like finishing sets, large flagship sets in particular, but also team sets, and sometimes a mini insert set, when I need a fix fast.   There is no better feeling in the hobby for me than finishing a set, yelling "Done!" in the privacy of my own home as I slip the final card into the binder...

 (Happy President's Day. No, I don't have this day off or the week off. I do have an extra day off thanks to the post office not delivering today. But that'll be Wednesday, not today. Wish me luck as I will have ventured out into 13-degree weather with the wind howling at 30 mph tonight. Time for Cardboard Appreciation! This is the 348th in a series):   I received this 1979 Hostess panel from Max of Starting Nine . Every time I land a Hostess panel the debate begins -- cut or leave intact!   Each item is a special case. I am collecting both panels and individual cards for all the '70s Hostess sets and sometimes the decisions are tough. So let's go through what we know:   1. You can see that the panel is scuffed and creased. This means almost nothing to me when it comes to Hostess cards. They practically came out of the package beat up (or more accurately "stained up"). This was long before every card had to be pristine and imprisoned. But it sometimes affe...

  This has been a weird holiday week as far as working my job. In general, holidays don't mean much in the journalism world, the news doesn't stop and newspapers come out every day (mostly). But my paper has always been good about holidays and I often am able to take some time off. Not this year. I worked on Christmas. Not unusual but not ritual either. I also worked on New Year's Day. Both of those are very common days to have off in the general work world. Also I did a little work on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve even though I was technically off. Meanwhile, my work computer decided to stop working two days before Christmas. Apparently it wanted a vacation, too. And good luck getting someone to look at it during the holiday week. I've been working from home ever since. I could go on and on but to sum up, I feel like I'm the only one working the last 10 days. I'm a little sick of it. So what we have here is a lazy write-up on some cards that came to my d...

  Set collectors know that it takes a long time to get to the completion finish line. For example, I'm very close to finishing off a set (probably in the next couple days) that has taken seven years to finish -- and it took even longer if you count those random cards from the set I had as a youth. But, yeah, seven years is nothing in the set-collecting world. I admit, I don't think about the length of time much. I probably wouldn't collect sets as avidly if I focused on the duration all the time. I do, however, note mini-milestones along the way to completion. I need those little celebrations and it provides a boost to keep going. For example, the card above is the final card I needed from the non-SP portion of the 2024 Topps Heritage set. Yay, mini-milestone! It arrived from the Shlabotnik Report . (I think that may be the first time I've received cards from him, which is wild). The same card also arrived again today, which I'll get to. Isn't that always the wa...